Notes on Bonding

Written by Zelda

The following is my attempt to explain the process we Territorials refer to as ‘bonding’. Defining it, though complicated, is not difficult. One needs to simply understand the ambiguity of many things in this world, the most of which cannot be seen by the naked eye or felt by the human instinct. My combination of stories from my elders and modern scientific terms may make this misunderstanding easier to overcome.

To understand what a bond is, one needs to begin at the beginning: with what all life itself consists of. The details of life are for another story altogether; in brief it can be said that we believe all life to materially consist of a combination of four elements: earth, water, fire, and sky. A unique combination of these four elements exists in every living thing. This combination, when it is first brought together at the creation of a life, creates something separate from the elements that made it. This separate entity is the closest thing to a soul or a spirit that we believe in; it is unique and does not return to its originating elements when the life form that holds it ceases to be.

Each life holds a unique spirit, and each spirit exudes a unique presence. It is hard to define it in human terms, the closest things it can labeled as are personality or energy. This presence is felt not only in life by the being that holds it, but can also be felt by other living things, although not as easily. Although it can be felt but not seen, like the wind, this energy does not inhabit the physical realm. This unique presence forms an identity for the being that holds it, beyond physical appearance or mental knowledge.

A ‘bond’ is the ability to sense and identify these presences. Being bonded to someone means that one can recognize that it is there, select it from physical senses. The strength of a bond is measured by how easily one can feel this presence from someone else. The ability to feel a bond is not selective, one cannot choose to hone in on one particular presence at a certain time, or to block it out. As far as we can sense, bonds are felt on a subconscious level. We are aware of presences even when our rational minds are not functioning, or resting. We can sense presences in our sleep, and –if they are strong-, in unconsciousness. A true bond is two-way. One can sense the presence of another, and vice versa. A half-bond is the kind of bond that Territorials form with humans and non-elementals (alien life forms). These bonds, because the one being bonded to cannot return the sensory connection, are not as strong and much more poorly defined in the mind of the originator of such a bond.

Now that bonding has been defined, it is important to record, for human interpretation, what a bond feels like and what purpose it serves to our clan. Bonds allow us the ability to have a very rudimentary sense of emotion between bonded pairs. As stated above, a bond is defined by recognizing the energy or presence that makes up one’s spirit. This energy, like all energy, is never static. Even when one is sleeping, the energy of their life is in constant flux. We believe that changes in this energy are the subconscious originations or expressions of emotion in the conscious sense. Whether emotions are controlled by these instinctive energy fluxes, or whether it is the other way around, we do not know. These energy fluxes, not the emotions they are expressed as, are what we can feel through bonds. Growing strength of a bond allows us to identify these fluxes as emotions, as well as physical pain. Strong bonds function as a constant subconscious monitor of those one is bonded to. Since our clan is small and close-knit, bonds of varying strengths exist between virtually every member, even the youngest. Bonds tend to naturally strengthen with time and close contact.

The strongest bond that exists between members of the clan is called a life-bond. Members of long-lived leadership dynasties and certain elders have them, and they are products of intense mutual need and the challenges of time. Leaders form fast life-bonds to one another because of the rather extreme natures of their personalities and elemental makeup. They literally need each other, bonded as a unit, to exist independently on a conscious level. Such strong bonds help to balance these elemental aspects among a dynasty, and are beneficial to the entirety of the clan. However, life-bonding also has drawbacks. When the life of one side of a life-bonded pair ends, the other half of the pair suffers an immeasurable subconscious loss. This occurs every time a bond is broken; the severity of the loss increases with the strength of the bond. The deaths of elders has sometimes brought on scattered episodes of self-mutilation, but these occurrences are rare, and best explained as an attempt by the living to convince a temporarily scrambled subconscious that they are not dead themselves. Because life-bonds entail that a bonded pair becomes subconsciously dependent on one another to survive, the loss of one side of the pair is too grievous a wound to recover from. The remaining side of the life-bonded pair is essentially doomed, and they follow the dead after a period of increasing mental instability and physical weakness. This period can last from a few months to a few decades. When one leader out of a dynasty dies, all other life-bonded leaders (usually the rest of the dynasty) will also die as a direct result.

The importance in detailing bonding is that, to the best of our knowledge, such an ability is unknown in humans. It was thought for many years that bonding to humans was impossible, we now know that to be untrue. Humans and non-elementals alike can indeed be bonded to by members of the clan, and most likely by other animals as well. However, since they have long-ago lost the ability to sense fluxes in elemental or spiritual energy, humans cannot return this bond or subconsciously acknowledge that they may be bonded to. The strongest bonds that can be formed to them are half-bonds. However, relations between the clan and specific humans are still young and ill-formed, it is unknown to what extent they can go. It is important in our relations with the human world to try and explain as much as we can about ourselves, it can help to bridge the gap between our senses, and the human lack thereof.